I was in Sir Sidney Smith’s ship, cruising down Channel, and we used to see the gunboats and flat-bottoms he got together for crossing the straits—or one night, with poor Captain Wright, that we stood in near enough to get a shot sent at us off the heights—the whole shore about Boulogne was one twinkle of lights and camp-fires, and you heard the sound of the hammers on planks and iron, with the carts and gun-carriages creaking—not to speak of a hum from soldiers enough, you’d have thought, to eat old England up! And where are they now?” “I don’t know, sir, indeed,” said the first lieutenant gravely, supposing by the captain’s look, no doubt, that it was a question. “What, Captain Wallis!” exclaimed I, “were you with Captain Wright, then, sir?” Of course, like every one in the service, I had heard Captain Wright’s story often, with ever so many versions; there was a mystery about his sad fate that made me curious to hear more, of what gave the whole navy, I may say, a hatred to Bonaparte not at all the same you regard a fair enemy with. “_With_ him, say you, sir?” repeated the captain of the Podargus, “ay was I! I was his first lieutenant, and good cause I had to feel for the end he came to,—as I’ll let you hear. One night Captain Wright went ashore, as he’d often done, into the town of Beville, dressed like a smuggler; for the fact was the French winked at the smuggling, only I must say _we_ used to land men instead of goods. I didn’t like the thing that night, and advised him not to go, as they’d begun to suspect something of late; however, the captain by that time was foolhardy, owing to having run so many risks, and he was bent on going in before we left the coast; though, after all, I believe it was only to get a letter that any fisherman could have brought off. The boat was lying off and on behind a rocky point, and we waited and waited, hearing nothing but the sound of the tide making about the big weedy stones, in the shadow from the lights of the town; when at last the French landlord of the little tavern he put up at, came down upon the shingle and whistled to us. He gave me a message from Captain Wright, with the private word we had between us, saying he wanted me to come up to the town on a particular business. Accordingly, I told the men to shove out again, and away I went with the fellow. No sooner did I open the door of the room, however, than three or four gens-d’-armes had hold of me, and I was a prisoner: as for Captain Weight, I never saw him more. The morning broke as they brought me up on horseback in the middle of them, along the road to Paris, from whence I could make out the cutter heeling to the breeze a mile or two off the land, with two or three gunboats hard in chase.”